Georges Boudarel
From dduffy@email.unc.edu Thu Apr 15 10:43:47 2004
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 13:30:17 -0500
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Boudarel
For those of you not on Chris Goscha's list, I find today cleaning
up my mail after the holidays his announcement that Georges Boudarel
died around 12/26/03. Boudarel rallied to the Viet Minh as a young man,
and left the Democratic Republic he had helped to create when it turned
against critical thought. In his later life in Paris, he was the great
collector and Western-language scholar of the Nhan Van/Giai Pham moment
he had lived through in Ha Noi, as well as a devoted teacher. I would
appreciate hearing about any public notices of his life.
Dan
From sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu Thu Apr 15 10:44:12 2004
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 22:18:26 -0800
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [BBC] BBC obituary for Boudarel
I met him several years ago when he visited the Indochina Archive of UC Berkeley where I worked. He was quite friendly, as I recall it was around that time that he had completed a book on the Hundred Flowers campaign in North Vietnam. Around 1992 he became a subject of controversy in France because it was alleged he was involved in torturing French POWs. Anyone know what came of that?
- Steve Denney
From mchale@gwu.edu Thu Apr 15 10:43:57 2004
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 12:01:36 -0500
From: mchale <mchale@gwu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: More on Boudarel
Dear list,
Thanks to Dan Duffy for posting more on Georges Boudarel. Dan posted a fair account of his life -- some of us are indebted to his work -- but this bit stuck in my craw:
"I have never seen, even in the polemics against him, any specific assertion that Boudarel did anything more sinister than work for a prison camp. It is sinister, but someone has to do it unless we simply shoot all prisoners."
I did not know Boudarel well at all. I only met him several times. But I suspect that he himself would not agree with the tone of those sentences. Before going to Vietnam in 1992, I asked him for suggestions for reading. His response: he said I should read a particular book by a Russian author on the gulag in the USSR!
I think I can understand, however imperfectly, how Boudarel came to agree to take on his prison position -- which was as a political commisar. This past fall, I stumbled across several DRV books on "dich van," or prosletyzation among the enemy, that were published around 1950. The Viet Minh was trying to win over troops in the French army, and it was making a particular effort to target Germans (yes, Germans) as well as others among the troops. As described, Dich van seems eminently reasonable. It's just that its implementation in prison camps was horrendous. And Boudarel, it seems, was part and parcel of that implementation.
In life, people sometimes make horrible mistakes. Boudarel did. Someone once told me that he thought Boudarel was haunted by his prison experience all his life. But Boudarel did not try to whitewash that mistake. (That would be easy: the lack of food in Viet Minh zones -- a complaint of some of the prisoners -- was sometimes due to the actions of the French military.) Instead, he cast a critical eye on the workings of a communist system that, initially informed by great idealism, foundered (to say the least). For his work on that topic, as well as on others, we should all be grateful. His one big mistake should not invalidate an entire life.
Shawn McHale
Shawn McHale
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
The George Washington University
e-mail address: mchale@gwu.edu
From dduffy@email.unc.edu Thu Apr 15 10:44:03 2004
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 09:41:44 -0500
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Boudarel
Stephen asked about "l'affaire Boudarel", when former prisoners
of war denounced him in the 1990s for working in their prisoner of war
camp. If you use Google on "Boudarel" you will find a recent
obituary from Le Monde that mentions this, as well as older publications
from Boudarel's accusers.
In a nutshell, they sued him and lost, he sued them for suing him and
lost, and they sued him for suing them and lost. The charge was something
like what we call slander in the US, but I'm sure the meaning is diiferent
in France.
All the courts took years to come to the same decision, that the 1966
amnesty under which Boudarel returned to France foreclosed any subsequent
action. That reasoning forestalled even any depositions in the original
action, but Boudarel's counter-attack opened the way for testimony,
so there may be available some sworn public record on the facts.
I have never seen, even in the polemics against him, any specific assertion
that Boudarel did anything more sinister than work for a prison camp.
It is sinister, but someone has to do it unless we simply shoot all
prisoners. When I studied in Paris, a Vietnamese studies colleague who
is basically a patriotic French citizen with ties to national defense,
as I am an American one, remarked to me that Boudarel was a simply an
idealist when he was young, which is no crime.
A journalist once asked the man himself whether he had been an idealist
or a bastard (salaud) to work for the Stalinists. Boudarel replied,
"I was an asshole. (con)"
He was a great man, whose translations made the Nguyen Khac Vien/Huu
Nguc anthology possible, and whose study of Nhan Van/Giai Pham was about
all there was until Kim Ninh took up the subject. Stephen's raising
the figure of Douglas Pike, who did scholarship for the criminal destruction
of the National Liberation Front and then maintained Vietnamese studies
in the US through its period of neglect, suggests to me a rich comparison
to Boudarel. Both men made striking decisions about important matters
that most of their peers took no consequential action on. Thinking about
these two can tell you who are as a Viet Nam scholar in France or the
US.
Since the European Union was formed, Boudarel's accusers took up the
struggle again, arguing that EU concerns about human rights trump a
purely domestic amnesty. I don't know what affect his passing will have
on that action.
I will put together a text file of obituaries and previous coverage
and post it here. I'm not going to do anything fancy, just glean from
a Google search on Boudarel, from Le Monde and Liberation and Figaro,
and add the BBC article and any other overseas coverage that I find
quickly.
I would very much appreciate a copy of the RFI Vietnamese broadcast
which mentioned his death, if they covered it. I would also appreciate
any citation to the press in Viet Nam.
Dan Duffy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/regionalnews/story/2003/12/031229_boudarel.shtml
Quynh Le referred me to this article, available at the BBC website
at
Dan Duffy
From sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu Thu Apr 15 10:44:17 2004
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 22:03:04 -0800
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@uclink4.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Boudarel
Well, I disagree with Dan that Douglas Pike performed scholarship for the "criminal destruction" of the NLF; and Shawn McHale's comments concerning Boudarel represent my view as well. On the other hand, I liked Boudarel when he visited the archive, and admire his scholarship on Vietnam. I wish more of his writings were translated into English, particularly the book about the 100 flowers campaign in north Vietnam.
As many people here probably know, a part of the Indochina Archive that grew out of Mr. Pike's collection remains at Berkeley, while the other part moved to Texas Tech (the latter consisting primarily of materials prior to April 1975). We had many visitors to the archive but no one works there now.
- Steve Denney